GET READY, GET SET, GO

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

The Delaware Democrats traditionally are too
impatient to wait for Labor Day as the unofficial start
of the campaign season. They use their Sussex County
Beach Jamboree, held a weekend earlier at Cape Henlopen
State Park, to get going.

Usually the Democrats wait for an election year, but
not this time.

There is so much at stake in 2008 -- with statewide
openings for governor and lieutenant governor, as well
as the mother of all political battles for control of
the state House of Representatives -- that candidates
squeezed their presence into the end of August as
determinedly as people made those last trips to the
beach.

It all pointed toward the Labor Day weekend, when the
Republicans roused themselves, too. The Democrats did
what they do best by marching alongside the
rank-and-file in t-shirts with union labels, and the
Republicans went with their forte by raising money among
the beautiful people at the beach.

A lot of the pre-Labor Day flurry could be attributed
to Jack and John.

Treasurer Jack A. Markell and Lt. Gov. John C. Carney
Jr. drew their line in the sand, so to speak, at the
beach jamboree in their contest for the Democratic
nomination for governor, the most coveted office in the
state, and just kept on going.

Markell, the sunniest of campaigners, proved it with
a fair-weather bicycle ride he calls "Tour de Delaware."
For the second year in a row, he pedaled northward
through all three counties, this trip taking him from
Selbyville to Wilmington.

Tour de Jack was a two-day ride, plumped up from the
119-mile trek he planned to 128 miles because of two
detours, one for a safer road and another for a wrong
turn. Markell was accompanied each day by about 10
cyclists, including state Sen. David P. Sokola, a
Democratic ally who was inspired enough to add extra
miles and accomplish his first back-to-back century
rides of 100 miles each.

Markell says he cycles to promote healthy living and
the state itself -- "You see the incredible beauty of
Delaware. When you're on a bike, you see so much" -- but
he is, after all, a politician, and it is hard not to
think he also is injecting some Kennedy-style vigor into
his candidacy, particularly because his rival for the
nomination is a former All-Ivy League football player
from Dartmouth.

Carney countered with a business-like week of
no-nonsense politics. In keeping with his brisk tone at
the jamboree -- "I'm ready to be the governor" -- he
announced he had assembled a team of consultants, headed
by David Hamrick of Hildebrand Tewes Consulting, based
in Washington.

Hamrick has Delaware experience as the state
Democrats' campaign coordinator for the 2000 election,
when the party ran away with the governorship and won a
battle of the titans as then-Gov. Thomas R. Carper
ousted U.S. Sen. William V. Roth, a five-term
Republican. Carney was elected lieutenant governor that
year, too.

In addition, Carney picked up an early endorsement
from a local Teamsters union. It issued a press release
saying, "While both Democratic candidates have
exceptional records in public office, we feel that Lt.
Gov. Carney is the most experienced and qualified
candidate for governor."

In the eight-day span from the jamboree to Labor Day,
the Democrats also saw a potential congressional primary
between Dennis Spivack and Christopher A. Bullock all
but sort itself out.

Spivack, the 2006 nominee who was craving a rematch
with U.S. Rep. Michael N. Castle, an eight-term
Republican, conceded he was unlikely to have the
financial backing he needed. Unless someone else comes
along, it essentially cleared the way for Bullock, a
Wilmington pastor who has not committed to run but is
acting very much like a candidate, appearing early in
the week at an anti-war rally that had Castle as its
focus.

Castle himself used the Labor Day weekend to tend to
his own campaign, swelling an already ample
million-dollar treasury by taking in about $35,000 from
an upscale reception held Saturday at Kings Creek
Country Club in Rehoboth Beach. It was attended by more
than 200 people, including Sherwood Boehlert, a
Republican ex-congressman who retired to Kings Creek
from New York.

Two days later, Castle was upstate in Wilmington for
the Labor Day parade, plunging into an event that is
heavily but not entirely Democratic. The unions are not
what they used to be, but it still pays for politicians
to try to stay on their good side. As Wilmington Mayor
James M. Baker, a Democrat, once quipped, "The two
best-organized groups in the country are Republicans and
unions."

Every statewide officeholder was there, except for
U.S. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., who had a Democratic
presidential campaign to run and was mingling with the
Northwest Iowa Labor Council, and Gov. What's-Her-Name.

Carney had the honor of carrying the AFL-CIO banner
that led the parade. Markell marched with the Delaware
State Education Association. So did Insurance
Commissioner Matthew P. Denn and Wilmington Council
President Theodore Blunt, both Democratic candidates for
lieutenant governor.

Bullock stepped out with the Building & Construction
Trades Council, its contingent chanting robustly, "We
are the Laborers, mighty, mighty Laborers." State House
Minority Whip Helene M. Keeley, who is in the thick of
the fight to elect a Democratic majority for the first
time since 1982, marched with the state workers.

The parade had more participants than spectators, as
union members ambled down King Street amid the
occasional band. U.S. Sen. Thomas R. Carper, a Democrat
whose record for statewide victories is not just luck,
showed his political smarts by greeting the front of the
parade, working his way back through the marchers by
shaking hands, and then turning around to become the
last man on the route to wave at the crowd.

State Democratic Chair John D. Daniello stood on the
sidelines. He turned 2006 into a Democratic year largely
because of a mammoth get-out-the-vote drive using union
volunteers, and at the parade he looked very much like
someone eying his next batch of recruits.

It was Labor Day, after all, time to crank up a new
campaign, because there is no longer any such thing as
an off-year.